I get the impression that people don't fully appreciate what I mean when I tell them that I live in the ghetto. Usually, I get a nod of understanding and a chuckle that says, "Don't we all, really?"

No. Not everyfuckingbody lives in the ghetto. So what if the guy down the street leaves his Christmas lights up year-round; it doesn't mean you live in the ghetto. So what if your neighbor's house needs a new a coat of paint and his lawn is infested with weeds; one house does not a "'hood" make. And an undeveloped dirt lot on your corner does not qualify you for slum status, either.

Let me tell you about my neighborhood.

To the north:
Less than a block away, to the north, we have Denver's inner-city projects. Denver's first homicide of 2004 took place in these projects. Imagine waking up on New Year's Day with a mild hangover. You stumble to the bathroom to take a piss and guzzle down a big glass of water. You pull on your bathrobe and decide a frozen breath of downtown smog will help clear your head. You step outside into the cold and behold a police barricade at the corner of your street. ...Happy fucking New Year.

And it was within these same projects that a policeman shot, and killed, a man this past July. Apparently, the officer mistook the victim's shiny Pepsi can as a gun.

To the west:
A block and a half to the west is a train yard. I'm not talking about a bunch of tracks that crisscross and scatter. I'm talking about a train yard where trains are maintained, stored, loaded, unloaded, hitched, and unhitched. Blowing train horns and ringing RR Crossing warnings ensure that my neighborhood never falls silent.

Oh, and just a block past the train yard is the highway. Not just any highway, but the busiest highway in the entire state: I-25. And not just any old stretch of I-25, but the busiest stretch of I-25. Yes, less than 19 stone-throws away (yeah, I throw like girl) is the busiest stretch of the busiest highway in the entire state of Colofuckingrado.

To the south:
On the corner of my block, approximately 40-yards from my lawn, is the highest grossing liquor store per square foot in the state of Colorado. I have no stats to support this claim, only my observations. That lq is constantly busy and the foot traffic that flows between the projects and the lq is insane. One day I went to the liquor store to buy a bottle of wine. The only wine they had came in a box. We're not talking high-end anything in that store. No single malt scotch, no Grey Goose vodka, no Bombay gin. That store specializes in beer and malt liquor.

Also, our direct neighbors to the south were visited by Denver's SWAT team right after Christmas. A big white van. Dudes in full SWAT gear. Doors getting kicked in and perps getting cuffed. I had a front row seat. I didn't even realize the no-knock raid was going down until Sherry told me that some punk ran past our kitchen window into our back yard. I ran out our side door to chase him away, but a big SWAT dude charged at me and ordered me back into my house.


...So why do I live in the ghetto? I'll start by challenging anybody to find an affordable house in downtown Denver. We're a single-income family who found a place to buy IN downtown Denver. In my opinion we scored. Despite living in the ghetto, I love our 'hood. We can walk to downtown, and not some fringe area that suburbanites consider downtown, but the actual heart of downtown with all the big-ass office buildings and pedestrian malls. We can walk to Mile High Stadium, the Pepsi Center (home of the Nuggets and Avalanche), the capitol, the lightrail station, etc. And remember, I could see the downtown Denver New Year's fireworks from my living room window.

We have access. We are centrally located. My work commute by buss is 25-minutes, and by car it's 12-minutes.

And I have yet to describe what lies to the east of us...


To the east:
Three blocks to the east is the trendy upscale art district, gallery after gallery displaying all varieties of artwork. And sprinkled between the galleries are independent theatres, non-corporate coffee houses, and upscale restaurant-lounges. Whenever there is a gala or debut, the streets are lined with luxury sedans and SUVs. (I'm trying not to rant about the stupidity of luxury SUVs and how they are nothing more than egocentric cries of conspicuous consumption... luxury SUV is oxyMORONic.) I chuckle when I watch the fur-clothed, diamond-wearing, art crowd shuffle the night streets oblivious to the ghetto that lies beyond the streetlamp glow of Santa Fe Boulevard.

Yes, the upscale east mitigates that which makes our neighborhood ghetto.


Other cool benefits to living in the ghetto:

• The Burrito Lady. Every Saturday (unless it's deathly cold out) the Burrito Lady walks our 'hood, selling tamales, chili rellenos, and a variety of burritos out of her cooler... only she uses its insulative properties to keep the burritos warm. The goods are cheap at $1.50 ($2.00 for the rellenos) and unbelievably delicious. I've had other burrito vendors' wares and none compare to the Burrito Lady. The burrito sellers who hit my office, the burrito sellers who stopped by my old job site, the burrito sellers who prowled my old college campus, and the burrito sellers that wait outside the downtown night clubs are all twice as expensive and half as filling.
  
• Missionaries stop by the house during the holiday season to offer us food. Yes, our 'hood is so poor that missionaries go door-to-door handing out food. We decline, by the way; there are plenty around us who do need the relief.
  
• No foolish home owners associations with retarded neighborhood covenants.
  
• I can always claim that "I'm keeping it real, yo."

...and so it was written, shenry at 1/18/2005 01:11:00 PM.
...and so it was appended with .